If ever real leadership was needed among American, European and Arab leaders, it's now.

By Mark LeVineAl-Jazeera

"....Apocalypse now

Whoever is involved and whatever their individual motivations, the reality is that there are so many reasons for huge swaths of the citizenry of these countries to be angry at their own governments and the major Western powers, or to be using this moment of chaos to pursue their own interests, that trying to pin these protests on some fanatical and irrational anti-American fury directed against a movie trailor would seem to be an unsupportable proposition.

What is clear is that because the US, including the present administration, have expressed so little disgust at the reprehensible actions of their local clients in the past, it's very hard for it to be taken seriously now, when trust and good will in American intentions is most needed. Indeed, one could argue that Obama aggravated the history of mistrust by starting his presidency with his famous Cairo speech promising a new beginning to US-Muslim relations, only to continue and even intensify many of the policies that people across the Muslim world have, quite naturally, found most objectionable.

Perhaps the most pernicious blowback to this whole situation would be if an intensification of the protests and more violence against American property and citizens helps the President's Republican opponent to paint him as weak and unwilling to defend America's honour - the mirror image of the extremist Muslim rallying cry against the US...."

"Anti-American protests are spreading across the Muslim world over a film trailer deemed highly insulting to Islam's Prophet Muhammad. The US has condemned the film and the filmmakers, and tightened security at its overseas missions. So what is fuelling the protests? Guests: Flynt Leverett, Michelle Dunn, Tariq Ramadan."

"Countries neighbouring Syria must ensure that refugees who are stranded on their borders are allowed to find sanctuary, Amnesty International said.

The organisation wrote to the Turkish and Iraqi authorities calling on them to open all border crossings to refugees from Syria, after both nations continued to prevent access to safety for those fleeing the escalating violence by delaying entry to their territories.

“Civilians have born the brunt of large-scale crimes against humanity, war crimes and other human rights abuses committed in Syria, and any obstacles or delays in allowing refugees to reach a place of safety would place them at risk of further serious human rights abuses in breach of international law," said Ann Harrison, Amnesty International’s Deputy Programme Director for the Middle East and North Africa.

“Amnesty International calls upon countries neighbouring Syria to keep their borders open to those fleeing the conflict, and urges all countries in the region and elsewhere to ensure they do not force anyone to return.

“Amnesty International also calls on the international community to urgently and generously respond to calls for funding for relief efforts, directed at Syrian refugees in the region, in the spirit of solidarity and responsibility-sharing.”

More than a quarter of a million people who have fled from Syria since March 2011 have either been registered as refugees or are awaiting registration in neighbouring countries, namely Turkey, Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon, with numbers growing daily, according to the UN refugee agency, UNHCR....."

".....With the attention of the international media mostly focused on fighting in Aleppo and the capital, hardly any news reaches the outside world about the horrors of daily life for the residents of Jabal al-Zawiya and elsewhere in the Idlib and north Hama regions.Every day civilians are killed or injured in their homes, or in the street, as they run for cover.....

Towns and villages have been virtually emptied of their residents, many of whom are now camping out in the surrounding countryside or hiding in caves.

Some are crowding in with relatives in what they hope are safer areas. Others have fled across the border to Turkey – or are currently stuck at the border waiting to cross.....

The bombing and shelling is relentless. During the 11 days I’ve been in the area not a single day passed without shelling and I did not find a single town or village which had not been hit.

Victims are almost always civilians. Not surprisingly, as the unguided bombs dropped by aircraft, and artillery shells and mortars are notoriously imprecise. They target areas, not specific objects, and are meant for the battle field. They should never be used in residential areas.....

In an emergency room a 13-year-old boy screamed in pain; he had shrapnel injuries all over his body and was waiting his turn to be seen behind others with even worse injuries. Two of those patients died in the following two hours despite the doctors’ efforts to save them.

They were the victims of yet another indiscriminate attack. Some of the wounded and their relatives told me several missiles exploded in the nearby village of Ehsem, killing and injuring residents in their homes and in the street. Five were killed and at least ten were injured in the attack.

The same pattern is repeated in all the areas which have come under the effective control of opposition forces. Having been forced out of the area, government forces are now bombing from the air and shelling from afar, knowing that the victims of such indiscriminate attacks are almost always civilians."

"....So when someone is keenly aware of another’s value system and what hot button issues are likely to generate widespread outrage, such deliberate acts should be called for what they actually are: the highest form of fomenting incitement and hatred.

But how could the U.S. deal with free speech and art that incite and tear apart human relations without violating its most cherished principle?

One of the limitations in the United States constitutional law to freedom of speech as protected by the First Amendment is the “fighting words” doctrine. In a 1942 famous Supreme Court case, the unanimous ruling held that “insulting or fighting words, are those that by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace.” Applying such a principle can easily lead to the balance needed between the inviolability of the principle of freedom of speech and the narrow exception where such speech results in a serious massive injury that would rupture harmony and peace within communities, cultures, and countries.

Yet what about the practice of freedom of speech in the West?.....

What these examples and many others illustrate is that the protection of the constitutional freedoms of speech, expression, and association are used selectively in the U.S. on the basis of political judgments. American officials, public intellectuals, and opinion makers revel in invoking the first amendment as an inviolable principle when Islam or its sacred symbols are attacked, and then find rationalizations and loopholes when American Muslims engage in objectionable free speech activities. However, this double standard is not lost on the majority of people in the Muslim world and across the globe...."

The reports from Syria of the journalist Robert Fisk raise serious questions over his credibility, say Yassin Al Haj Saleh & Rime Allaf.

The international media has not always been kind to Syria’s revolutionary people. For months on end, many of the latter turned themselves into instant citizen-journalists to document their uprising and the violent repression of the Syrian regime, loading clips and photos taken from their mobile-phones to various social networks; still, the established media, insinuating that only it could really be trusted, covered these events with an ever-present disclaimer that these images could not be independently verified. Since the Damascus regime was refusing to allow more than a trickle of foreign media personnel into the country, chaperoned by the infamous minders, what the Syrians themselves were reporting was deemed unreliable.

Nevertheless, an increasing number of brave journalists dared to sneak into Syria at great personal risk, reporting the same events which activists had attempted to spread to the world. For the most part, experienced journalists were perfectly capable of distinguishing between straight propaganda from a regime fighting for its survival and real information from a variety of other sources. Overwhelmingly, ensuing reports about Syria gave a voice to "the other side" or at least quoted opposing points of view, if only for balance. In some cases, journalists found no room to cater for the regime’s claims, especially when reporting from civilian areas under relentless attack by Bashar al-Assad's forces.

It was from the wretched Homs district of Baba Amr, under siege and shelling for an entire month, that the late Marie Colvin, amongst others, testified on the eve of her death under the regime’s shells about the "sickening situation" and the "merciless disregard for the civilians who simply cannot escape." Like her, most of those who managed to get into Syria have testified about the regime’s repression of a popular uprising, even after the latter evolved to include an armed rebellion.

The Daraya massacre

Robert Fisk, a seasoned war correspondent who has covered the region for decades, surprisingly broke a mould, gradually allowing himself to become a part, and not simply a witness, of the Syrian regime’s propaganda campaign.

On 30 October 2011, Fisk - who works for the Independent newspaper, and whose reports are widely republished - was a guest of Syrian state television for an extended interview during which his legendary directness seemed subdued, as he meekly advised his host that he feared the Syrian authorities were running out of time to turn the situation around. In an article entirely dedicated to Bouthaina Shaban, one of Assad’s advisors, he quoted some of her extraordinary tales without adding one of his trademark comments: thus, he didn’t challenge the claim that a Christian baker in Homs was accused (supposedly by the extremists the regime says are leading the uprising) of mixing whisky in the bread.

Over the last few months, Fisk’s pieces on Syria have consisted more of commentary than of reporting, with a growing emphasis on the conspiracy scenario as he reminds readers that the governments criticising the Assad regime were themselves hardly examples of freedom or democracy. This is indeed true in many cases, but is not directly relevant to the Syrian people’s uprising, which moreover he increasingly reports in the sectarian terminology he had previously criticised when covering the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

"(Beirut) – The arrest by security forces of well over a dozen peaceful reform activists since September 7, 2012, signals the government’s toughening stand toward demands for political reform in the kingdom. The authorities should release all of those detained solely for the peaceful exercise of their rights to expression, association, and assembly.

The security services arrested activists in various parts of the country for peacefully protesting or calling for reform, in what appeared a concerted move by security and judicial authorities against opposition groups. Those arrested include eight activists from the southern town of Tafila, two from Karak, and seven from Amman. All were charged under terrorism provisions, which place them under the purview of the military-dominated State Security Court, three lawyers for the activists told Human Rights Watch. All remain in detention....."

An incendiary 'movie' should not allow fringe elements to co-opt and realign the trajectory of the Arab revolutions.

As Usual, A Good PieceBy Hamid DabashiAl-Jazeera

".....Déjà vu: Beware the False Fury

The principle problem with this absurdity, however, is not its origin—but its destination: the riots and demonstrations in front of the US embassies that began in Cairo and Benghazi and have now spread all over the Muslim world.

Attacks on embassies and rage against insult to Prophet Muhammad in the Muslim world have a frightening echo in the ears of an Iranian—remembering the US Hostage Crisis of 1979-1980 and the Salman Rushdie affair of 1988-1989—two smoke screens under which militant Islamists in Iran (some of them now among the so-called “Opposition”) hijacked a revolution and categorically recoded it as “Islamic.”

The current catastrophe called “the Islamic Republic” and the entrapment of 75 million human beings in its theocratic snare is framed between those two smoke screens—two diversionary tactics made out of events that fell on Ayatollah Khomeini’s lap.....

The differences between 2012 and 1979

The same danger is now looming from Cairo to Benghazi to the rest of the Arab and Muslim world—for militant Salafis or Wahhabis to abuse this ignoramus film to derail a world historic succession of revolutions. But this time around Arab revolutionaries are far quicker in responding both to ghastly Islamophobia and the violent disrespect for the sacrosanct principle of diplomatic immunity. Demonstrations in both Benghazi and Cairo have categorically denounced the violence that has resulted in the death of Ambassador Christopher Stevens.

It is imperative that these denunciations be amply noted—as indeed President Morsi put it succinctly: "We Egyptians reject any kind of assault or insult against our prophet. I condemn and oppose all who... insult our prophet. [But] it is our duty to protect our guests and visitors from abroad... I call on everyone to take that into consideration, to not violate Egyptian law... to not assault embassies.”.

This is the difference between Khomeini n 1979 and Morsi in 2012. Beware the false fury....."

Thursday, September 13, 2012

A group of rightwing extremists aimed to destabilize post-Mubarak Egypt and roil US politicians. They got their wish

Max Blumenthalguardian.co.uk, Thursday 13 September 2012

"....Produced and promoted by a strange collection of rightwing Christian evangelicals and exiled Egyptian Copts, the trailer was created with the intention of both destabilizing post-Mubarak Egypt and roiling the US presidential election. As a consultant for the film named Steve Klein said: "We went into this knowing this was probably going to happen."....

Who was Bacile? The Israeli government could not confirm his citizenship, and for a full day, no journalist was able to determine whether he existed or not. After being duped by Bacile, AP traced his address to the home of Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, a militant Coptic separatist and felon convicted of check fraud. On September 13, US law enforcement officials confirmed that "Sam Bacile" was an alias Nakoula used to advance his various scams, which apparently included the production of The Innocence of Muslims......

Through his friendship with Nasrallah, Klein encountered another radical Coptic separatist named Morris Sadek. Sadek has been banned from returning to his Egypt, where he is widely hated for his outrageous anti-Muslim displays. On the day of the Ground Zero rally, for instance, Sadek was seen parading around the streets of Washington, DC, on September 11, 2010, with a crucifix in one hand and a Bible implanted with the American flag in the other. "Islam is evil!" he shouted. "Islam is a cult religion!".....

With another US election approaching, and the Egyptian government suddenly under the control of the Muslim Brotherhood, Klein and Sadek joined Nakoula in preparing what would be their greatest propaganda stunt to date: the Innocence of Muslims....

For Sadek, the chaos was an encouraging development. He and his allies had been steadfastly opposed to the Egyptian revolution, fearing that it would usher in the Muslim Brotherhood as the country's new leaders. Now that their worst fears were realized, Coptic extremists and other pro-Mubarak dead-enders were resorting to subterfuge to undermine the ruling party, while pointing to the destabilizing impact of their efforts as proof of the government's bankruptcy. As Sadek said, "the violence that [the film] caused in Egypt is further evidence of how violent the religion and people"...... "

At the New York Review of Books, Max Rodenbeck (who is Chief Middle East Correspondent for The Economist) describes some of the striking parallels between the way in which the Assad regime has dealt with the uprising and Israel’s approach to crushing the Palestinian intifadas. The article is behind the NYRB subscription firewall, but here’s an excerpt:

[T]he Syrian government, uniquely among countries swept up by the Arab Spring, represents not merely a corrupt and oppressive ruling clique. It baldly represents the interests of a small, fearful, well-armed, and organized sectarian minority, set against the wishes of a majority that has remained inchoate, politically divided, and powerless. The fact of this polarization, long elaborately disguised by hollow pageantries, has only become clear to many Syrians now that the underlying nature of the state has been exposed and the violence implicit in the country’s neocolonial power structure has been made dramatically explicit.

The stark estrangement between rulers and ruled struck me during a visit last winter to Douma, a largely Sunni Muslim suburb of Damascus. It is one of a ring of overgrown villages, divided from one another and from the old city center by empty spaces that have now revealed their utility as potential security cordons. Taken together these villages house most of the capital’s four million people. At the time Douma was just emerging from the trauma of a three-week government siege designed to flush out what state television insists on calling “terrorists.” The campaign worked, for a while: the then barely armed local self-defense groups loosely known as the Free Syrian Army briefly pulled out of Douma to spare it further punishment. (As has happened nearly everywhere the government then claimed victory; the rebels simply waited, then filtered back.)

As a proud group of local youths showed me holes blasted by tank fire as a show of force, a mosque donations box pilfered by soldiers, and a cemetery with many fresh graves and more gaping open, ready for urgent use, the thought kept nagging that I had seen this all before. It was when they pointed out that every one of Douma’s rooftop water tanks had been punctured by government gunfire that I realized what seemed familiar.The Israeli army had done the same thing during the first Palestinian intifada. In fact, the entire catalog of collective punishments meted out in Douma suggested the handbook of an army of occupation: cutting power and phone links for days on end, enforcing curfews with snipers, forcing children at gunpoint to paint over graffiti, breaking down doors instead of knocking, administering public beatings, arresting male youths en masse, using masked informants to finger suspects.

The leader of the organization reportedly behind the anti-Muslim film sparking angry protests in the Middle East spoke at a rally opposing the Park 51 Islamic center in lower Manhattan last year. That rally, on September 11, 2010, was organized by Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer, two leading Islamophobic activists and bloggers in the U.S.

The California-based Press Telegram reports today that an organization called Media for Christ produced the Islamophobic film at the center of the controversy that has sparked widespread protests in the Middle East. The film, "Innocence of Muslims," portrays the Prophet Muhammad as a womanizer, a gay man and a child abuser. Depictions of the Prophet are considered blasphemous to Muslims.

The head of Media for Christ is Joseph Abdelmasih, the Press Telegram reports. On California's Secretary of State page, Media for Christ is registered as a business entity with Joseph Nasralla Abdelmasih listed as the "agent for service of process." Here's a screenshot of the Secretary of State page:

The Associated Press revealed more details of who was behind the film yesterday, after a day-long scramble. The AP originally reported that it was an Israeli Jewish person who made the film, but that was a false claim. Last night, the news service reported that Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, a Coptic Christian living in California, helped with the film.

"....There are still plenty of people in Western armies and intelligence services who feel nostalgia for the old way of doing things, when they dealt with a compliant Egyptian army and did not have to worry about democratically elected Muslim Brothers or others more extreme. The Arab Spring was never a collective vote in favour of Western states, but a series of real revolutions that have other surprises, both good and nasty, in store."

"Protests are spreading in the Middle East over a movie made by a U.S. filmmaker considered blasphemous to Islam. Earlier today, hundreds of Yemeni demonstrators stormed the U.S. embassy in Sana’a, smashing windows and burning cars before breaking through the compound’s main gate. Protests have also occurred in Egypt, Iraq, Iran, Tunisia and Bangladesh, as well as the occupied Gaza Strip. We get updates from journalists Iona Craig in Sana’a and Sharif Abdel Kouddous in Cairo....."

"As anti-U.S. protests spread across the Middle East, we’re joined by Tariq Ramadan, Professor of Contemporary Islamic Studies at Oxford University and Visiting Professor at the Faculty of Islamic Studies in Qatar. Ramadan is considered one of the most prominent Muslim intellectuals in Europe and was named by Time Magazine as one of the most important innovators of the 21st century. He was barred from entering the United States for many years by former president, George W. Bush. In 2004, Ramadan had accepted a job to become a tenured professor at the University of Notre Dame, but nine days before he was set to arrive, the Bush administration revoked his visa, invoking a provision of the USA PATRIOT Act. He was not allowed into the United States for another six years. Ramadan is the author of a number of books, including "Radical Reform, Islamic Ethics and Liberation" and most recently, "Islam and the Arab Awakening."....."

It only takes a couple of loonies a few seconds to kick off a miniature war in the Muslim world

By Robert Fisk

"So another internet clever-clogs sets the Middle East on fire: Prophet cartoons, then Koranic book-burning, now a video of robed "terrorists" and a fake desert. The Western-Christian perpetrators then go into hiding (an essential requisite for publicity) while the innocent are asphyxiated, beheaded and otherwise done to death – outrageous Muslim revenge thus "proving" the racist claims of the trash peddlers that Islam is a violent religion.

The provocateurs, of course, know that politics and religion don’t mix in the Middle East. They are the same....

Ironically, there is room for a serious discussion among Muslims about, for example, a re-interpretation of the Koran; but Western provocation – and western, alas, it is – closes down such a narrative. Meanwhile, we beat our chests in favour of a ‘free press’. A New Zealand editor once proudly told me how his own newspaper had re-published the cartoon of the Prophet with a bomb-filled turban. But when I asked him if he planned to publish a cartoon of a Rabbi with a bomb on his head next time Israel invaded Lebanon, he hastily agreed with me that this would be anti-Semitic.

There’s the rub, of course. Some things are off limits, and rightly so. Others have no limits at all. Several radio presenters asked me yesterday if the unrest in Cairo and Benghazi may have been timed to “coincide with 9/11”. It simply never occurred to them to ask if the video-clip provocateurs had chosen their date-for-release to coincide with 9/11."

The religious oppression, hatred and violence is "a toxic brew that… inevitably begets more of the same"

By Mark LeVineAl-Jazeera

"....The unrestrained anger against a YouTube clip has even led to outrage among some Syrian activists, with one tweeting that "the only thing that seems to mobilise the Arab street is a movie, a cartoon or an insult, but not the pool of blood in Syria".

Blowback of the ugliest kind

Americans and Europeans are no doubt looking at the protests over the "film", recalling the even more violent protests during the Danish cartoon affair, and shaking their heads one more at the seeming irrationality and backwardness of Muslims, who would let a work of "art", particularly one as trivial as this, drive them to mass protests and violence.

Yet Muslims in Egypt, Libya and around the world equally look at American actions, from sanctions against and then an invasion of Iraq that killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and sent the country back to the Stone Age, to unflinching support for Israel and all the Arab authoritarian regimes (secular and royal alike) and drone strikes that always seem to kill unintended civilians "by mistake", and wonder with equal bewilderment how "we" can be so barbaric and uncivilised.

Russia receives little better grades on this card, whether for its brutality in Afghanistan during the Soviet era, in Chechnya today, or its open support of Assad's murderous regime.

Meanwhile, the most jingoistic and hate-filled representatives of each society grow stronger with each attack, with little end in sight....."

".....Why is all of this important? It is important because a serious debate about an asymmetrical bilateral relationship in which Benjamin Netanyahu is now demanding that the United States enter a war in which many Americans will likely die and the U.S. economy will be devastated is not taking place. Instead, our political and chattering class think it is better to go with the flow. Would I describe the politicians and journalists who are along for the ride as Quislings? Probably, but the label is not as important as an understanding of the damage they are inflicting on our country. Congressmen like Mike Rogers should think first of the people who elected him, not Israel. Mitt Romney, who has never served his own country in uniform, appears prepared to go to war at the behest of a not completely rational Benjamin Netanyahu while America’s two major political parties, at the national and state levels, are seeking to outdo each other to accommodate Israel at every turn. Perhaps it is time for the American people to begin to recognize that these fifth-column politicos are betraying our country and its vital interests. But maybe it is too late for that. The propaganda mill in favor of Israel and all its works has been grinding for far too long, and too many people appear to be convinced that what is good for Israel is good for the United States."

"(Reuters) - Hundreds of Yemeni demonstrators stormed the U.S. embassy in Sanaa on Thursday in protest at a film they consider blasphemous to Islam, and security guards tried to hold them off by firing into the air.

The attack followed Tuesday night's storming of the United States Consulate in Benghazi, where the ambassador and three other staff were killed. President Barack Obama said the perpetrators would be tracked down and ordered two destroyers to the Libyan coast, but there were fears protests would spread to other countries in the Muslim world.

Young demonstrators shouting "we redeem, Messenger of God" smashed windows of the security offices outside the embassy with stones and burned cars beforebreaking through the main gateof the heavily fortified compound in eastern Sanaa. Others held aloft banners declaring 'Allah is Greatest'.

Tyres blazed outside the compound and protesters scaled the walls.

"We can see a fire inside the compound and security forces are firing in the air. The demonstrators are fleeing and then charging back," one witness told Reuters....."

He denied being Sam Bacile, the pseudonym for the video's purportedly Israeli Jewish writer and director, but AP said the cellphone number it called for a telephone interview with Bacile on Tuesday matched Nakoula's address.

His outing solidified growing evidence that members of Egypt's Coptic diaspora, who complain of persecution by Egypt's Muslim majority, were behind the making and promotion of the video.Morris Sadek, a conservative Coptic Christian in the US, promoted it on his website last week. Within days it was fuelling outrage in Arab countries horrified at the depiction of the prophet Muhammad as an illegitimate, murderous paedophile.

An anti-Islamic activist and self-described "consultant" on the film, Steve Klein, has worked closely with Coptic groups over the years, according to Jim Horn, a fellow activist......"

"The attack on the US consulate in Benghazi may have been just an out-of-control protest against a crude movie produced by an Israeli-American certified Islamophobe - or a determined response to the death by drone of al-Qaeda number 2 (and former "freedom fighter"), the Libyan Abu Yahya al-Libi. Either way, Mr Blowback has his day - again. So what now? Who're you gonna bomb? Who're you gonna drone to death next?...."

"Finance Minister Momtaz al-Saeed told the Shura Council on Wednesday that Egypt is in desperate need of the International Monetary Fund loan, and that the public debt has swelled.

The minister also said the government has been unable to collect LE60 billion for years. “These are either disputed taxes or differences in land prices,” he explained.

“We tried to borrow from local banks, but interest rates are 15 percent, ten times that of the IMF,” he added. “We need the loan to offset the budget deficit and stop the depletion of our cash reserve.”

Meanwhile, a senior EU official told Reuters that Egypt needs more than US$10 billion to save its economy, adding that the EU is supporting the IMF loan and willing to provide additional financial support, which would be the highlight of President Mohamed Morsy’s discussions in Brussels......"

Despite claims to the contrary, the Palestinian economy is drowning in exploitation and debt.

A VERY GOOD PIECE

By Ali AbunimahAl-Jazeera

"....Recent calls by Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman for Abbas to be replaced would undoubtedly have added to nervousness in Abbas' entourage that the PA's American and Israeli sponsors might try to oust Abbas and put Fayyad in his place....

...Other protests did turn against Abbas and the Palestinian Authority regime in general, and in Ramallah dozens of PA intelligence operatives shadowed demonstrators and harassed people in the streets whom they suspected of subversive intentions. If Abbas or his loyalists were behind any part of the protests, they risk unleashing a process they cannot control.

Against this background, both Abbas and Fayyad have been outbidding each other in their efforts to prove their loyalty and usefulness to the occupation regime and its US backers.....

Poverty and debt

As a recent World Bank report stated [PDF], virtually all the "growth" in the West Bank was the result of foreign aid and in the last few years, the PA "has become more donor dependent at an increasing rate", with "the majority of the recent donor aid" allocated "to pay PA salaries and arrears, which has pumped up consumption and imports of consumer goods".....

On top of this, the 1994 Paris Protocol, the economic counterpart of the 1993 Oslo Accord, gives Israel strict control over the Palestinian economy, including all imports and exports.....

Palestine's new capitalists

A new class of Palestinian middlemen and capitalists close to and sometimes part of the Palestinian Authority, have flourished while the rest of the population has floundered....

Economic liberation

Masri fits into a bigger picture, where holding companies like PADICO headed by billionaire Munib Masri, and the PA-owned Palestine Investment Fund, concentrate wealth and control of the Palestinian economy in the hands of a very few powerful men with no accountability whatsoever to the Palestinian people.

These men have been able to market their private interests as Palestine's "national aspirations" with full support of the so-called "international community" even as they depend on maintaining cordial and profitable ties with the occupation they claim to oppose.

What this means - and perhaps what protestors in the streets of the West Bank are starting to recognise - is that the Palestinian liberation struggle will have to be directed not just at Israel's racist colonial regime but also the global neoliberal economic system that has thoroughly penetrated Palestine and corrupted irreparably the idea of a "state" even before one is declared."

Wednesday, September 12, 2012

"Despite the government's call for calm, a few dozen protesters showed up outside the US embassy.

The prosecutor general said four people are being questioned after protesters on Tuesday climbed over the embassy's walls and took down the US flag.

Nine Coptic Egyptian-Americans were also put on an airport watch list. They are believed to have contributed to the production of the anti-Islam movie that led to the embassy protest.

The man behind the protests says he just wants to combat insults against Islam through legal and peaceful means.

Wesam Abdel Wareth, the protest organiser, has said his group is not happy that young people who joined their protest brought down the US flag. He also says there was no co-ordination with protesters in Libya, and condemned the violence there.

The Pakistani government should urgently act to protect the minority Shia Muslim community in Pakistan from sectarian attacks by Sunni militant groups, Human Rights Watch said today. The government should hold accountable those responsible for ordering and participating in deadly attacks targeting Shia.

While sectarian violence is a longstanding problem in Pakistan, attacks against ordinary Shia have increased dramatically in recent years, Human Rights Watch said. In 2012, at least 320 members of the Shia population have been killed in targeted attacks. Over 100 have been killed in Balochistan province, the majority from the Hazara community.

“Deadly attacks on Shia communities across Pakistan are escalating,” said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “The government’s persistent failure to apprehend attackers or prosecute the extremist groups organizing the attacks suggests that it is indifferent to this carnage.”

"The U.S. ambassador to Libya has been killed along with three other embassy staff after protesters stormed a consular building denouncing an American-made film insulting the Prophet Muhammad. Ambassador Christopher Stevens is reportedly the first U.S. envoy to be killed abroad in more than two decades. We’re joined from Benghazi by Libyan activist and journalist Nizar Sarieldin, and also speak to Vijay Prashad, professor at Trinity College and author of "Arab Spring, Libyan Winter."...."

Protesters attacked the US consulate in Bengazi, Libya on Tuesday night and killed four Americans, including the US ambassador, Chris Stevens. The attacks were triggered by rage over an amateurish and deeply hateful film about Islam that depicted the Prophet Muhammad as, among other things, a child molester advocate, a bloodthirsty goon, a bumbling idiot, and a promiscuous, philandering leech. A 13-minute trailer was uploaded to YouTube and then quickly circulated in the Muslim world, sparking widespread anger (the US embassy in Cairo was also attacked).

The anti-Islam film was written, directed and produced by an Israeli real estate developer living in California, Sam Bacile. He claimed, in an interview with Haaretz, that the film "cost $5m to make and was financed with the help of more than 100 Jewish donors". Its purpose, as described by the Israeli newspaper, was to show that "Islam is a cancer" and to provide a "provocative political statement condemning the religion". It's hard to believe the the film – which is barely at the level of a poorly rehearsed high-school play – required $5m to make, but the intent seems clear: to provoke Muslims into exactly the sort of violent rage that we are now witnessing.

Events like this one are difficult to write about when they first happen because the raw emotion they produce often makes rational discussion impossible. A script quickly emerges from which All Decent People must recite, and any deviations are quickly detected and denounced. But given the magnitude of this event and the important points it raises, it is nonetheless worthwhile to examine it:

1) The deaths of Ambassador Stevens, a former Peace Corps volunteer and a dedicated Arab-speaking career diplomat, and the other three American staff, are both a tragedy and a senseless outrage. Indiscriminately murdering people over a film, no matter how offensive it is, is an unmitigated wrong. The blame lies fully and completely with those who committed these murders.

2) Sam Bacile and his cowardly anonymous donors are repellent cretins for producing this bottom-feeding, bigoted, hateful "film" that has no apparent purpose but to spread anti-Islamic hatred and provoke violent reactions. But just as was true of the Qur'an burnings by Pastor Terry Jones (who, unsurprisingly, has a prominent role in promoting this film), or the Danish Muhammad cartoons before that, it is – and it should be – an absolute, unfettered free speech right to produce films no matter how offensive their content might be.

3) It is hard not to notice, and be disturbed by, the vastly different reactions whenever innocent Americans are killed, as opposed to when Americans are doing the killing of innocents. All the rage and denunciations of these murders in Benghazi are fully justified, but one wishes that even a fraction of that rage would be expressed when the US kills innocent men, women and children in the Muslim world, as it frequently does. Typically, though, those deaths are ignored, or at best justified with amoral bureaucratic phrases ("collateral damage") or self-justifying cliches ("war is hell"), which Americans have been trained to recite.

It is understandable that the senseless killing of an ambassador is bigger news than the senseless killing of an unknown, obscure Yemeni or Pakistani child. But it's anything but understandable to regard the former as more tragic than the latter. Yet there's no denying that the same people today most vocally condemning the Benghazi killings are quick and eager to find justification when the killing of innocents is done by their government, rather than aimed at it.

It's as though there are two types of crimes: killing, and then the killing of Americans. The way in which that latter phrase is so often invoked, with such intensity, emotion and scorn, reveals that it is viewed as the supreme crime: this is not just the tragic deaths of individuals, but a blow against the Empire; it therefore sparks particular offense. It is redolent of those in conquered lands being told they will be severely punished because they have raised their hand against a citizen of Rome.

4) The two political parties in the US wasted no time in displaying their vulgar attributes by rushing to squeeze these events for political gain. Democratic partisans immediately announced that "exploiting US deaths" – by which they mean criticizing President Obama – "is ugly, unwise".

That standard is as ludicrous as it is hypocritical. Democrats routinely "exploited US deaths" – in Iraq, Afghanistan, and 9/11 – in order to attack President Bush and the Republican party, and they were perfectly within their rights to do so. When bad things happen involving US foreign policy, it is perfectly legitimate to speak out against the president and to identify his actions or inaction that one believes are to blame for those outcomes. These are political events, and they are inherently and necessarily "politicized".

5) Drawing conclusions about Libya, and the US intervention there, from this situation would be unfair and far too premature. This does, however, highlight the rampant violence, lawlessness, militia thuggery, and general instability that has plagued that country since Gadaffi's removal from power. Moreover, given all the questions, largely ignored, about who it was exactly whom the US was arming and empowering in that country during the intervention, and what the unexpected consequences of doing that might be, it is vital to know how the attackers came into possession of rocket-propelled grenades and other heavy weaponry.

In sum, one should by all means condemn and mourn the tragic deaths of these Americans in Benghazi. But the deaths would not be in vain if they caused us to pause and reflect much more than we normally do on the impact of the deaths of innocents America itself routinely causes.

".....Islam is by definition wider than any issue of national politics, and these incidents highlight the uncomfortable truth that the US remains deeply unpopular across the Muslim world, as shown again by a recent YouGov poll. Iraq, Afghanistan, and above all the enduring Israeli-Palestinian conflict remain open sores.

But religion and politics make for a toxic combination. "The US has killed hundreds of thousands of unnamed Muslims in 9/11 revenge wars," commented the Palestinian rights advocate Ali Abunimah. "Media dehumanisation helps make this possible.".....

Arab governments generally want to get on well with Washington, but given the background it is a relationship that will always be vulnerable to provocations by extremists on both sides. For too many across the region, Pastor Terry Jones looks more influential than Barack Obama."

Speaking by phone from an undisclosed location, the writer and director Sam Bacileremained defiant, describing Islam as "a cancer". The 56-year-old said he had intended his film to be a provocative political statement condemning the religion.

Protesters angered over Bacile's film on Tuesday opened fire on, and burned down, the US consulate in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi, killing a US diplomat. In Egypt, protesters scaled the walls of the US embassy in Cairo and replaced an American flag with an Islamic banner.

"This is a political movie," said Bacile. "The US lost a lot of money and a lot of people in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but we're fighting with ideas."

Bacile, a California property developer who identifies himself as an Israeli Jew, said he believed the movie would help his native land by exposing Islam's flaws to the world."Islam is a cancer, period," he said repeatedly.

The two-hour movie, Innocence of Muslims, had cost $5m (£3.1m) to make and was financed with the help of more than 100 Jewish donors, said Bacile, who wrote and directed it......"

The US consulate in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi is seen here on fire after gunmen attacked the compound, clashing with security forces. An American staff member was killed, according to Libyan security forces. Tuesday night's protest followed violent scenes outside the US embassy in Egypt. The violence is in response to an unspecified American film protesters say is blasphemous